ciMambwe festival

(written as part of a quarterly Peace Corps project report, hence the slightly different style from my typical posts)
On June 8, I was asked to accompany pupils from the zone to a Mambwe festival/competition.  While several staff members were the official chaperones of this overnight trip, only two of us actually stayed at the venue with the pupils (others stayed with family in town).  I had accompanied the same teacher as a group of staff and students to the zonal sports tournament in May 2011, we had been co-teachers together in Term 3 2011, and I had stayed with her at her parents' home in Mbala when we attended a co-worker's wedding in September.  Needless to say, we are sufficiently comfortable working and traveling together.  The evening included "girl talk" with her and another teacher in the district, where they offered to pray for  my marriage possibilities so that I could be sure to marry before leaving Zambia.  In the morning we helped the children prepare and watched the competition, which involved representations from school zones within the district presenting sketches, poems, songs, and dances in ciMambwe.  I even had the privilege of meeting Father Andrzeja Halembe, the Polish Catholic priest who has spearheaded the translation of the Bible, a dictionary, a collection of Mambwe folktales, Catholic missals, and a variety of other literature into the Mambwe language.

The best part of the trip, however, was the return, which was (like the ride there) in the back of a teacher's Toyota pickup.  We sang and laughed the whole way, including a song I definitely want to take back with me, which translates roughly to "Are you there, [fill in the blank]? We're coming/we've returned" and has a wonderfully adventurous feeling to it, both coming and going.  We reached Masamba at 18:00, and several of the children (from other schools in the zone) had a 2-4 hour walk home from there, clearly much too far to be started that evening.  Several of the teachers and I decided to split the students needing accomodation among us, with me hosting two teenage boys and two girls.  Since I generally eat nshima with my family, I don't have mealie meal, but another teacher sent some and some relish (having arrived too late to get anything from the market) along with the girls to my house.  My family allowed us to use their cooking fire to speed up the cooking process; the girls cooked nshima and one relish while the boys cooked another.  Meanwhile, I set up my spare room with a mosquito net, reed mat, and cushions.
 
The girls slept in my room and the boys in the spare room while I slept in my sitting room.  (I have an abnormally large house for a PCV.)  In the morning, I bought fresh fritters from the market and made tea and roasted groundnuts.  The children, meanwhile, were as self-sufficient as Zambian children always are, helping wash the dishes and sweeping my yard.  A few pupils who'd slept elsewhere joined us, and I escorted them all down my path a bit as they embarked on their hours-long walk home.

This experience was both enjoyable and affirming, because I felt very comfortable assuming the role as host.  My house has American qualities (e.g. books!), but ultimately it's constructed of the same basic materials theirs are, and I think it's comfortable without being ostentatious.  Had I been asked to host a year ago, I may have tried to provide a fancy American spaghetti meal or something, and not known how to entertain the children.  This time, I felt comfortable knowing they would expect--and probably prefer--nshima, that they would want lots of sugar in tea (or no tea at all) in the morning, that they would be delighted just sitting and talking together.  I have hosted a sleepover before, of little host sisters, which was also enjoyable.  That, however, was purely for fun--their homes are, after all, next door.  This situation was an opportunity to act not just as a big sister but as host in my professional role as a member of staff at Masamba.